imaginary food

[truepenny]

Talk to me about food in fantasy. (And science fiction, if you like.)

Readers, what kinds of details do you like to see? What makes a culture's eating habits come alive for you?

Writers (oh, please, writers, you're my only hope), how do you go about inventing cuisines and delicacies and what the street vendors sell? Especially when you are not relying on the old trick of, "I'll make this culture !Japan or !India or !France." How do you figure out what people eat?

Comments

[adrata.livejournal.com]

I strongly agree with the veto of "don't call it coffee". I actually find it pretty annoying to read slight but still obvious variations of names. It seems cheap to me, a little like pouring a can of gold paint over your dog and claiming you've found a new species. No one will be fooled and you'll look dumb for thinking they would be. And if you take the freedom of translating the rest of what the people in the story say, think and see into the language you're writing in - which must certainly be different from that spoken in your secondary world - then I don't see the point of making exceptions as long as there is an English equivalent available.

If the thing in question really is different somehow from its real-world analogue/inspiration, then yes, invent an entirely new name. That's fine. (One thing I love about truepenny's books are the gazillion beautiful place names.) But if an author makes up a new word for one plant/animal/device/... that is described as obviously the same as something we know, then I expect them to be consistent and invent new names for ALL things in that category. Which would make it difficult to even describe a simple meal consisting of more than one or two ingredients. Instead of just saying "vanilla pudding topped with strawberries and little cookies", you'd get a lengthy passage of description - which might still leave some readers puzzled.

"The bowl contained a large dollop of ambrugam, a viscous, light yellow mass that always tasted a little like a condensed summer's evening, topped with some small, red berries speckled with funny little green dots - lifunia - and some baked golden-brown flakes that looked a little like tiny maen."

(I apologize if some of this sounds strange - I'm not a native speaker. But it still illustrates my point. Seeing how painfully annoying it was to write a few lines like this, I would hate to constrict myself like that for writing an entire book. And I almost tumbled into my own trap here. "Maen" was "flatbreads" a minute ago, and I first tried to describe pudding as being made by boiling milk, sugar, eggs and whatever transports the desired flavour.)

So... yeah. My humble opinion is that if it's coffe, you should call it coffee. Anything else becomes ridiculous or inconsistent way too quickly.